1 Spatial Autocorrelation Daniel A. Griffith Department of Geography, Syracuse University _____________________________________________________________________________ I. Introduction II. Definition of Notation III. Conceptual Meanings of Spatial Autocorrelation IV. Estimators of Spatial Autocorrelation V. Theoretical Statistical Properties of Spatial Autocorrelation VI. Common Probability Model Specifications with Spatial Autocorrelation VII. What Should an Applied Spatial Scientist Do? _____________________________________________________________________________ Glossary auto- model A statistical model whose associated probability density/mass function contains a linear combination of the dependent variable values at nearby locations. correlation A description of the nature and degree of a relationship between a pair of quantitative variables. covariance matrix A square matrix whose diagonal entries are the variances of, and whose off- diagonal entries are the covariances between, the row/column labeling variables. estimator A statistic calculated from data to estimate the value of a parameter. geographic connectivity/weights matrix An n-by-n matrix with the same sequence of row and column location labels, whose entries indicate which pairs of locations are neighbors. geostatistics A set of statistical tools used to exploit spatial autocorrelation contained in georeferenced data usually for spatial prediction purposes.